An ambitious project to provide bionic arms to dozens of children in the near future has an equally ambitious goal of molding more of the ABS parts of those prosthetic limbs in house.

Limbitless Solutions, a small Orlando-based company on the campus of the University of Central Florida (UCF), has supplied bionic arms to 40 children so far and is working to place another 25 limbs this year.

Nine of the parts those limbs require are being molded at present. With a goal of increasing that to 16 parts, Limbitless has added a new Tormach 770M mill to machine molds in the company’s manufacturing lab. The machine joins a Tormach 8L lathe and a PCNC 440 mill and will be used to create aluminum injection molds to be used on the company’s vertical molding press.

Augmenting the company’s molding functions are numerous 3D printers that produce small parts.

Dominique Courbin, Director of Production at Limbitless, cited ongoing supply struggles as a key driver for bringing in more production equipment.

“It’s hard to buy small quantities of anything, especially with the current supply chain challenges,” said Courbin, “so we decided to bring machining capability in-house.”

Limbitless hopes to raise funds to donate 100 bionic arms to 100 Bionic Kids in future clinical trials, at an expected cost of $10,000 per child. The company also hopes to create limbs for adults and facial-controlled wheelchairs for ALS patients.

The nonprofit organization, founded in 2014 by UCF students, has five full-time employees and works with university undergraduates, who fulfill roles in engineering, design, production, and other duties.